Debbie, Donna and the DNC: A silver lining in convention chaos

The notion that the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia would run smoother than the GOP's Trumpfest

The notion that the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia would run smoother than the GOP's Trumpfest last week went out the door quickly.

Even before the affair was gaveled in Monday, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would quit after the convention — the biggest scalp from the Wikileaks hack of DNC e-mails.

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The scandal revealed? That the committee was not as neutral in the Clinton-Sanders contest as Wasserman Schultz had repeatedly told the press. To the contrary, most people at the DNC wanted a Clinton victory. Sanders partisans thus call the entire DNC corrupt. They wanted Wasserman Schultz's head and they got it.

Whether party committees should or should not be neutral in contested primaries can be debated forever (there are many examples on both sides of the aisle showing that neutrality is practically a myth).

The question is whether the DNC and the party can turn this temporary embarrassment to its advantage. The committee promptly turned to veteran politico and pundit Donna Brazile to be interim chairman. This is actually brilliant in two significant ways. (Full disclosure, this writer has known Brazile for over 20 years when they both worked on Capitol Hill. He's found her to be nothing but professional and above-board.)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Ross D. Franklin/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Having long been a vice chair of the DNC, Brazile is, yes, viewed with some suspicion by Sanders supporters. But, in fact, she may be best positioned to act as a bridge between the establishment and the insurgency. After all, she's been both.

Brazile got her big break in the 1988 Jesse Jackson campaign - something of an inverse prototype of the Sanders effort. While echoes of that campaign's far-left politics can be found in Sanders', its demographics — heavily black — couldn't be more different.

Regardless, while Jackson lost handily to Michael Dukakis, his campaign forced through a number of reforms at the DNC — and helped lead to the appointing of Jackson convention manager Ron Brown as DNC chair (the party's first African American in that role).

So Brazile — having been outsider and insider — should have at least a familiarity with the frustrations the Sanders people have with the committee and how some compromises may be reached, in a way that Wasserman Schultz was not constitutionally suited.

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign

Beyond that, there's another, more important reason why Brazile may be the ideal person to lead the party into the fall.

A major concern Hillary and the Democrats have for November is turnout — specifically black voter turnout: Without Barack Obama on the ballot, will blacks turnout in the historic numbers they did in 2008 and '12? Of course, Democratic presidential nominees are, minimally, guaranteed near-90% of the black vote. But what will the raw numbers look like?

Well, funny thing, it may surprise many people to realize that despite Bill Clinton being nicknamed "the first black President," Al Gore actually got more black votes in 2000 than Clinton ever did. A major reason for that was a specific strategy of Gore's campaign manager — Donna Brazile. She essentially used African Americans' devotion to Clinton and anger at Republicans over impeachment to inspire them to go to the polls and "win one for the Bubba," i.e. vote for Gore.

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Even though Gore ended up losing the election via the Electoral College, his popular vote win proved that the black vote could be "transferred." You can bet that Obama and Brazile are going to try to prove that can also be done with Hillary.

And if the DNC emails had never been released, Debbie Wasserman Schultz would likely still be chairman — without a clue on how to identify and turn out the black vote. Arguably, this whole affair could turn out well for the Democratic Party down the line.